Anything worth saving on an old desktop?

I’ve got an old home built pc at my parents place from around 2005. Running XP Pro IIRC with a Pentium 4 processor. I remember we paid around $800 for the parts and the equivalent Dell at the time would have been about $1750. That’s about all I can tell you about it offhand. 

My dad told me it’s in the donate pile. I’ll need to rescue the hard drive from it, for identity theft issues, but is there anything I could do with the rest of it? Anything I should do with it? As far as I know it still works fairly well, we’ve just moved on to laptops. 

Sadly...no.      Pull the Drive,  donate to Goodwills electronic recycling program

I stuck my old PC in the garage to stream music and to have a "look up" station in there instead of tromping through the house to look up repair things.

I'd keep the power supply personally, those always come in handy. 

Not old enough to be considered "vintage" not new enough to work super well with modern windows systems on a network.

Grtechguy said:

Sadly...no.      Pull the Drive,  donate to Goodwills electronic recycling program

A lot of places won't take computers anymore, as the are not useful to anyone else, either.  You may end up trying to find an electronics recycler- the kind that shreds the machine and tries to mine the gold and other valuable metals.

In reply to alfadriver :

GW takes any electronics thanks to a Dell Partnership

https://www.goodwill.org/press-releases/goodwill-and-dell-expand-free-computer-recycling-programs/

Power supplies can be good for testing car electronics, even very old cars, since they output both 6 and 12 volts.

Ok, so far I've got to pull the hard drive and the power supply. 

Would it even be worth it to keep the case to potentially build a new Excel/Email/File taxes machine? I wonder how cheap you could do that these days. 

mtn said:

Ok, so far I've got to pull the hard drive and the power supply. 

Would it even be worth it to keep the case to potentially build a new Excel/Email/File taxes machine? I wonder how cheap you could do that these days. 

Do you really need a machine for that or just trying to find a way to save an incredibly outdated piece of technology? You could probably do what you're speaking of with a Raspberry Pi.

It's 15-year old hardware running a 20-year old OS. If it still fires up, I'd see what (if anything) is on the hard drive worth saving. Remove anything valuable, smash hard drive, donate whatever else, and move on.

z31maniac said:

mtn said:

Ok, so far I've got to pull the hard drive and the power supply. 

Would it even be worth it to keep the case to potentially build a new Excel/Email/File taxes machine? I wonder how cheap you could do that these days. 

Do you really need a machine for that or just trying to find a way to save an incredibly outdated piece of technology? You could probably do what you're speaking of with a Raspberry Pi.

It's 15-year old hardware running a 20-year old OS. If it still fires up, I'd see what (if anything) is on the hard drive worth saving. Remove anything valuable, smash hard drive, donate whatever else, and move on.

Kinda. I've been getting by with my phone and my work computer. I feel like I should probably have a home computer, but I doubt it'd be cheaper to build anything into it than it is to buy a laptop.

mtn said:

z31maniac said:

mtn said:

Ok, so far I've got to pull the hard drive and the power supply. 

Would it even be worth it to keep the case to potentially build a new Excel/Email/File taxes machine? I wonder how cheap you could do that these days. 

Do you really need a machine for that or just trying to find a way to save an incredibly outdated piece of technology? You could probably do what you're speaking of with a Raspberry Pi.

It's 15-year old hardware running a 20-year old OS. If it still fires up, I'd see what (if anything) is on the hard drive worth saving. Remove anything valuable, smash hard drive, donate whatever else, and move on.

Kinda. I've been getting by with my phone and my work computer. I feel like I should probably have a home computer, but I doubt it'd be cheaper to build anything into it than it is to buy a laptop.

Definitely. If you just need something basic for around the house, I'd just buy *insert deal on laptop* and move on. 

Look for folders with boring names like "Golf Club Designs" or "Grass Pictures". Names no one would look under is where the porn usually is hidden.

If the case is decent and you feel like building another PC, keep it.

Otherwise, let it go and get something that better fits your needs, like an AIO or a laptop, etc.

If the components were decent for their time, especially if there were any gaming-specific bits, someone may actually buy them. Part it out and toss it on Ebay. XP machines are starting to get attention in the "vintage PC" scene, so someone might pay you money for that stuff.

This thread is relevant to me... I've got 3 computers with Core 2 Duos just hanging around and I'm trying to figure out what to do with them.  They're 2 laptops and a 2009 Mac Mini.  I already have a HTPC and backup server.  

Tony Sestito said:

If the components were decent for their time, especially if there were any gaming-specific bits, someone may actually buy them. Part it out and toss it on Ebay. XP machines are starting to get attention in the "vintage PC" scene, so someone might pay you money for that stuff.

Really? That seems bizarre to me!

In reply to z31maniac :

That stuff is 15-20 years old now. it's 2020! Check out LGR on Youtube (one of the best channels on there, BTW). He just built a "new" machine that runs components that aren't too far off of what we are talking about here, and people are going nuts over it. It runs Windows 98, but could totally run XP.

Huh. Maybe I'll throw some of it on ebay. Doubt it is worth enough though.

I would donate it or get on CL and look in the wanted section for computer stuff.  There are people out there who are the GRM equivalent with computer stuff.  There is a guy around here who will take darn near everything because he likes to play, modify, and tweak stuff to build fun things for himself.  We had a bunch of old towers here at work.  I drilled the hard drives, kept the power supplies, and called him for the rest.  I did save a floppy drive because I found some old disks in the archive room and my curiosity meter hit maximum.

I love power supplies at the theater.  Many of them have multiple voltage outputs so one box does it all; 5v or 12v LEDs,  servos, solenoids, you name it.

If you are just a bit handy with a soldering iron, you can make a nifty adjustable power supply out of an old ATX PSU.  I use one to power my 2-meter mobile radio which I use as a base station.  Set at about 13.8 volts, it does a fine job, and is not the least bit noisy.

https://electronics.pl7.de/power-supplies/power-supply-from-2-4-to-23-volts-adjustable-from-an-old-at-or-atx-psu/

https://translate.google.com/translate?depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://boginjr.com/electronics/lv/atx-mod/

pinchvalve said:

Look for folders with boring names like "Golf Club Designs" or "Grass Pictures". Names no one would look under is where the porn usually is hidden.

Note to self…change Golf Club Designs folder name.

I've been saving any noteworthy components I have from old builds to create a mosaic/art piece from for my wall.  Because I'm a nerd like that.

You can definitely save the case.  The case for my machine is from the PIII/P4 era.  

ProDarwin said:

You can definitely save the case.  The case for my machine is from the PIII/P4 era.  

Dunno when they made the change, but I was looking for a free case for my son's server build which was going to be some old parts running Ubuntu Server nogui.  The tower case I got from a friend was so old that the power switch operated the PSU directly and did not plug into the motherboard.  Needless to say, I sprung for a new 40-dollar case.

there is a real basic Linux Q4 OS , set-up like Chrome , looks like windows XP or W7 ,  that a local guy puts on old laptops and gives to  kids.....

pinchvalve said:

Look for folders with boring names like "Golf Club Designs" or "Grass Pictures". Names no one would look under is where the porn usually is hidden.

Mine was always in "New Folder" or "New Folder 2"